Numerable methods and machines have been devised for cooking meat, poultry, and fish food products. These methods and machines use a host of cooking technologies including frying, baking, steam and broiling. Broiled meat products have become increasingly popular. This method provides a way to cook with reduced fat content and provide flavorful foods.
An automatic food cooking machine for broiling or barbequing flavorful foods is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,457 to Nelson Gongwer et al., incorporated herein by reference. The food cooking machine disclosed in the above mentioned patent is an energy efficient unit of a durable nature that can cook a high volume of food with exquisite flavor. The food cooking machine contains an oven with heating elements and a conveyor system for circulating the food products through the oven and past the heating elements. The food cooking machine also includes a sauce tank whereby as foods are circulated through the oven and past heating elements, the food products are also dipped into the sauce tank to enhance the flavor and texture of the cooked foods. The patent to Gongwer et al. also discloses a moveable runner that may be shifted in position over the sauce tank to prevent the food products from being dipped into the sauce while the cooked food products are being loaded into or removed from the oven.
While the moveable runner disclosed in the patent to Gongwer et al. does preclude the food products from being dipped into the sauce, the runner has limitations in that it must be positioned into place using two hands. It would be desirable to have a mechanism for preventing food products from being dipped into the sauce that can be operated using only one hand thereby allowing the operator's other hand to be free to perform other tasks.
Furthermore, the prior art rods that are used to pull the runner into position were located within the oven cavity. As such, the door of the oven had to be opened in order to pull the runners into place. As these rods were located in the oven, pulling the rods into place creates a potential burn hazard for the operator, and a generally uncomfortable work task for the operator due to the elevated temperature.
Lastly, the runners in the prior art extend behind the sauce tank occupying addition room in the cavity of the oven. If a mechanism for bypassing the sauce tank could be stored in the sauce tank itself, this would save space in the interior of the oven.
An object of the invention therefore is to provide a food cooking machine or automatic barbeque assembly with a sauce tank and an improved mechanism to allow the food products to bypass the sauce tank. In particular, a sauce tank bypass mechanism is needed which can be operated with one hand from the exterior of the oven and which minimizes the storage space required for the bypass mechanism within the oven cavity.